2 comments:

1) God and nature has become a chicken and egg problem for me. I wonder whether the greatest of Gods could know whether it's the greatest of Gods.

2) I think the New God Argument is relevant for practical and moral reasons whether or not a person chooses to posit God as an antecedent or a consequent of nature. The strength of the New God Argument is that it's forward-looking rather than backward-looking.

3) I'm not sure how to understand the flow from nature to emergent properties to possible Gods. Are you saying that one entails the other logically? If so, I'm not sure that's accurate.

4) What would it mean for actuality to be greater than possibility? That doesn't seem coherent to me.

5) When considering the possibility that the observable universe is infinite, are you considering whether it is infinitely divisible in time and space? While it might be in theory, doesn't the Planck unit make it finite in practice?

6) I don't think it's right to say science is hopeless in an infinite universe. I think there's good evidence to suggest that science is quite useful, regardless of whether we're in an infinite universe. It's contextual, for sure, but the idea of absolute science seems nonsensical to me anyway.

7) Even in a deterministic universe, it seems like there's still a kind of unique meaning, given that every point in time and space is universally unique. It may not be as meaningful in potential as other kinds of universes, but I'm not sure it's entirely meaningless for our practical purposes.

8) I don't think it follows that common intelligence entails irrelevant Gods. The question might be better framed in terms of superintelligence, but even then it seems that even common superintelligence is quite relevant to the extent you and I might be living within its influence.

9) I'm not sure it follows that the rarity of intelligence is what leads to involved Gods. I'm involved with my children, although children are not rare.

1) This is not the most important piece. The first option of Nature in God can lead into several later possibilities, but it can also lead into many possibilities I have no means to address in a practical way, and it is fundamentally untestable--even through the process of becoming Gods ourselves. The second option could be "true", but can be reduced to forms of the first or third.

2) I agree with your evaluation of the New God Argument, and that not all pieces of this diagram share that strength.

3) If Nature is antecedent, then Gods have to come from it somehow. I propose that they are possible as the result of some emergent properties of pre-existent Nature, but that they are not a necessary outcome of Nature. That is why it leads to "possible Gods" and an exploration of the nature of Nature. Only some possible Natures result in Gods at all, and others don't result in good Gods.

4) Actuality being greater than possibility is presupposed in certain conceptions of the universe. Whenever some physicist posits that there are infinitely many copies exactly like each of us, and exactly like each of us except for one small difference, and exactly like each of us except for several differences, and every other possible arrangement of subatomic particles and their interactions, that person is describing an actuality larger than the possibility space. There is so much stuff and so little variety that everything happens infinitely many times.

5) I'm thinking infinitely extended in time, space, and or matter/energy. I would have to think about infinitely divisible.

6) Science is not hopeless in an infinite universe. It is hopeless in an infinitely variable universe. We appear to not live in one of those, but if we did then we could make no scientific claims about anything we have not measured, and maybe no enduring claims about those things. Alternatively the infinitely variable universe is effectively a multiverse and you need to move to the adjacent flow chart.

7) If you read my previous post you will see my feelings on this topic. My experience can be meaningful in a deterministic universe, but it can only influence the future and others in predetermined ways, so I can't really "go wrong". I can only go one way. Thus, I work from the assumption that I can "go wrong" and choose to explore the consequences of those universes. Deterministic ones are repetitive and thus not uniquely meaningful. Every "me" found throughout them experiences an identical "meaning".

8) You are right. I would take suggestions on a better phrase to encapsulate the idea. However, past Gods have a much lower probability of having created us in this scenario since the probability of our having arisen "naturally" is much higher. If it is not true that the chance emergence of intelligence is as or more likely than the created emergence of intelligence, then intelligence is relatively speaking "rare", and you should be following the other branch. I maintain that something like this distinction is correct.

9) There is no evolutionary incentive to be involved if creation of new Gods is trivial. Human children are both rare and difficult to raise compared to jellyfish or (many) frogs or maggots. We are k-type reproducers, not r-type. Your example confirms my assertion rather than contradicting it.